Condon Committee - Assessments

Assessments

The Report earned a mixed reception from scientists and academic journals, while receiving "almost universal praise from the news media". Many newspapers, magazines and journals which published approving reviews or editorials related to the Condon Report. Some compared any continued belief in UFOs as the belief that the earth is flat. Others predicted that interest in UFOs would wane and in a few generations be only dimly remembered. Science, the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said "The Colorado Study is unquestionably the most thorough and sophisticated investigation of the nebulous UFO phenomenon ever conducted."

The March 8, 1969 issue of Nature offered a generally positive review for the Condon Report, but wondered why so much effort had been expended on such a subject: "The Colorado project is a monumental achievement, but one of perhaps misapplied ingenuity. It would doubtless be inapt to compare it with earlier centuries' attempts to calculate how many angels could balance on the point of a pin; it is more like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut, except that the nuts will be quite immune to its impact." On January 8, 1969, the New York Times headlined its coverage: "U.F.O. Finding: No Visits From Afar." The article said that based on the Report, the ETH could finally be dismissed and all UFO reports had prosaic explanations. It noted that the Report had its critics, but characterized them as "U.F.O. enthusiasts."

Critics made their case repeatedly without obtaining the government support they sought. One described the Report as "a rather unorganized compilation of independent articles on disparate subjects, a minority of which dealt with UFOs." Hynek described the Report as "a voluminous, rambling, poorly organized" and wrote that "less than half...was addressed to the investigation of UFO reports." In the April 14, 1969 issue of Scientific Research, Robert L. M. Baker, Jr. wrote that the Condon Committee's Report "seems to justify scientific investigation along many general and specialized frontiers." In the December 1969 issue of Physics Today, Committee consultant Gerald Rothberg wrote that he had thoroughly investigated about 100 UFO cases, three of four of which left him puzzled. He thought that this "residue of unexplained reports legitimate scientific controversy." Critics charged that Condon's case summaries were inaccurate or misleading with enigmatic reports "buried" among the confirmed cases.

In December 1969, physicist James E. McDonald called the Report "inadequate" and said "it represents an examination of only a tiny fraction of the most puzzling UFO reports of the past two decades, and that its level of scientific argumentation is wholly unsatisfactory." In a 1969 issue of the American Journal of Physics, Thornton Page reviewed the Condon Report and wrote: "Intelligent laymen can (and do) point out the logical flaw in Condon's conclusion based on a statistically small (and selected) sample, Even in this sample a consistent pattern can be recognized; it is ignored by the 'authorities,' who then compound their 'felony' by recommending that no further observational data be collected."

In November 1970, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics generally agreed with Condon's suggestion that little of value had been uncovered by scientific UFO studies, but "did not find a basis in the report for prediction that nothing of scientific value will come of further studies."

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